Written by In this month’s Blog I want to take the opportunity to focus a little on an aspect of provision in schools that has become more prominent in recent years: character education.
Our schools are social settings as well as centres of learning, and I wrote many months ago about the deficit experienced by children and young people when schools were closed, or had other restrictions resultant from Covid. As adults, much of the tone and rhythm of our social interactions was – for good or ill – already hardwired by the time ‘lockdowns’ and other measures were implemented. However, our children and young people were at a far more formative stage in their development of societal norms. As such, personal development, the instilling of fundamental British values and character education emerged with new prominence.
Some teachers and leaders feel uncomfortable with the responsibilities associated with conveying ethical or moral direction, considering themselves either ill-equipped professionally, unworthy personally or acting beyond their remit and transgressing into the territory of parents and carers. Whilst this is understandable, the counterpoint is worthy of mention here. The argument is that we were never able to assume, and now more than ever we cannot, that all children in all contexts receive a positive and meaningful character education outside of the formal provision of schools.
The popular philosopher Sam Harris once stated that:
“the science of morality is about maximising psychological and social health. It’s really no more inflammatory than that.”
We should all be able to work with children and young people based on such a premise.
Our Trust value of collegiality is expressed as “listening to others, sharing with others, learning from others.” Such behaviour clearly contributes to improved psychological and social health than contrasting behaviours would.
I’ll conclude with something I read recently about the British actor David Niven. In addition to being an acclaimed and accomplished actor whose work made him a worldwide celebrity, he also famously returned to Britain from Hollywood when the Second World War broke out in order to serve. His transatlantic schedules in film roles were numerous.
This perhaps summarises an aspect of character education that we would want to instil in all our children and young people:
“At his funeral, the largest wreath was from the porters at Heathrow Airport. There was a card which read, ‘To the finest gentleman who ever walked these halls. He made a porter feel like a king.’”
What a wonderful obituary.
Thanks, as always, for reading.
Mike.
You must be logged in to post a comment.